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Wednesday, 21 January 2015

Twitter acquires ZipDial startup in its first buyout in India

In an effort to expand its presence in India, Twitter has made it first acquisition in the country, gobbling up a Bengaluru-based startup ZipDial, which offers services like missed calls for user verification and alerts to its customers. Although the financial details of the deal were not revealed, a TechCrunch report pegs the monetary value at around $30-$40 million.

Founded in 2010, ZipDial assigns companies special phone numbers that they associate with their brands and use in their print or TV commercials. Users just have to make a missed call, one that disconnects before the other party answers, to these phone numbers following which they begin receiving inbound content and further engagement on their phone in real-time through voice, SMS or an app notification.

The startup, which had previously partnered with Twitter to offer tweets from Bollywood celebrities as SMS, has some of the leading brands and media companies as its clients, including Procter & Gamble, Cadbury, Unilever, Colgate, Disney, KFC, and MakeMyTrip.

“We’ve achieved more than one billion connections with brands across 60 million users,” ZipDial said in a blog post announcing the news. “Our ambitious goal is to make Twitter’s unique, great content accessible to 100% of the world’s mobile users, including those in emerging markets who will be experiencing the mobile Internet for the first time.”

“Millions of people are coming online for the first time in countries like Brazil, India and Indonesia. For many, their first online experience will be on a mobile device — but the cost of data may prevent them from experiencing the true power of the Internet. Twitter, in partnership with ZipDial, can make great content more accessible to everyone,” said Twitter Market Director (India and Southeast Asia) Rishi Jaitly.